Generally consumers who wish to purchase merchandise or services on credit must present one of several kinds of credit cards. For persons who have poor credit and therefore are unable to obtain a credit card or for persons who do not wish to have credit cards issued in their names, purchasing products or services is inconvenient and in some cases impossible. The problem is even greater when a consumer wishes to purchase a product remotely, e.g. online, and must use credit cards which the remote vendors accept. Even if the consumer has a particular type of credit card, that particular credit card may not be accepted by the remote vendor. In numerous circumstances, e.g. when a credit card company has raised their rates, vendors stop accepting that credit card. The only choice the consumer has in such a circumstance is to purchase using another credit card. Therefore, even having a credit card issued to a consumer does not alleviate issues related to purchasing products or services remotely.
Also, local vendors (e.g. restaurants) may as a policy not take credit cards. Inconvenience can elevate to embarrassment when the consumer, after having consumed a product, is informed by the vendor they only accept cash and the consumer has no cash to pay for the consumed product.
In cases where the vendors are willing to let the consumer obtain a new credit card account at the time of purchase of products or services and where the charges for the desired products or services are to be billed to the newly created credit card, consumers are often frustrated at the amount of time it takes to complete the required process. Additionally, a large number of security-sensitive questions are asked requiring the consumer to respond to these questions in public.
The reason for the requirement to acquire a large variety of personal information is to prevent unauthorized credit account creation. For example, creating a new credit card account would be easier if all a system required of the consumer was the consumer's social security number. However, social security numbers of consumers are often stolen in what is known as identity theft. Therefore, convenience of providing a small amount of data, e.g. social security number alone, is not practical when creating a new credit account.
Yet another frustrating situation is where the consumer wishes to obtain a remote service such as make a collect call to a recipient having a nontraditional telephone number. For example, an incarcerated person who in most cases has no access to a credit card cannot make a collect call to a cellular telephone, voice over IP (hereinafter VOIP), e.g. cable line phone, etc., since there is currently no way for the telephone companies to charge the recipient of the call with the collect call bill.
In some or all of the above situations a consistent obstacle is that of verifying identity of the unidentified individual. That is, a newly created credit account based on the information an unidentified person has provided is only as accurate as the information provided by that individual. If the unidentified individual has stolen a series of personal information from another person, the unidentified individual may be able to create a new credit account and falsely charge against that account. Only after the rightful owner of the personal information is made aware of the charges, will this identity theft situation become clear. This situation has plagued the credit card industry.
There is therefore a need for a third party system which by obtaining a small amount of personal information from an unidentified person communicating remotely using a communications device is capable of quickly checking and verifying the identity of that person, creating a new account or updating an existing account for that person, and thereafter extending credit on behalf of that person.